An Acer laptop got an infection that prevented it from connecting to the home wifi access point.

I cleaned up the infection… the laptop was very slow, even for Vista, given that it had 1Gb RAM.

After a while, I noticed that it would occasionally (every few hours) freeze, or produce a BSOD, with the error: Stop 0x00008086

I try a RAM test (all ok), HDD test (all ok).

I also download all the latest drivers via windows update, but that doesn’t help either.

There is not much info on the net about this error, so after a futile couple of hours trying fix it, I decide to give up and allow the customer to keep using it for as long as she can, and eventually get a new one if deemed necessary.

I hate giving up on problems, but in some cases it becomes obvious very quickly, that there is no point in trying to to find a solution, if its either unlikely to exist, or its going to take many hours to find.